TREASURE KILLS (Legends of Tsalagee Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

cliff face, anyway. Whatever Grampa Starr knew about that treasure, he took it to his grave.
    “And I tell ya, I don’t know if there’s anything to that curse thing, but I do know every time I went out looking for it something peculiar would happen. Sometimes it was simple things that stopped me like bad weather, or broken equipment. Whatever it was, it always seemed like something kept me from it. Could’ve just been coincidence, but I don’t know.”
    Goat nodded and smiled.
    When Lorene and Sunny came into the room, the conversation changed. Lorene walked over to open the living room window remarking that they needed to let some of that fresh spring air blow through the house to get rid of Buck’s stale tobacco smoke. Then she sat in her straight back rocking chair and looked at Goat.
    “So tell us what you do for a living,” she said to him.
     

Chapter 3
    Ed Takes His Share
    February 3, 1889
    The sound of the horse drinking at the water trough awakened Pearl. When she looked out the window, she could see dark splotches on its neck and mane, perhaps blood. She finally realized the horse was Venus, her mother’s mare, and it seemed to have injuries.
    Pearl got up from the bed, went to the door and opened it. “Ma?” she called out into the cold afternoon. The only answer she got came from a crow cawing somewhere down by the river. The air stood still and damp; a scent of impending snow seemed to fill it. The mare turned its head toward her and neighed softly. Pearl grabbed her shawl by the door, and wrapped it around her as she headed for the saddled mare. The animal seemed skittish at her approach, jerking its head upward with wide whitened eyes. She looked cold and frightened.
    “Easy, easy. Whoa,” Pearl coaxed softly as she reached for the loose reins dragging the ground. She examined the blood spots on the mare’s neck and could see only a few turkey shot-sized wounds. A smear of blood ran down the horse’s shoulder, and Pearl could tell it wasn’t the mare’s. “Mother?” she called again, this time with growing alarm, looking frantically about.
    Big, soft snowflakes had started slowly floating down, when Pearl found her mother. Back at the house, she’d hitched Clod, the big bay mule, to the wagon, and headed toward the landing of Hoyt’s Ferry on the north shore of the Canadian River. With the rider-less mare showing up, Pearl knew her mother must be somewhere between her home and the ferry crossing. The only way back to Younger’s Bend from Fort Smith was to use the ferry to cross the river near Whitefield. Three miles from the house, Pearl found her. She lay beside the narrow road with a light covering of snow over most of her, except for those large shotgun wounds in her back, neck, and face. The blood remained warm enough to melt the snow’s collection upon those places. However, Pearl held no doubt her mother, Belle Starr, was dead.
    She loaded the body into the wagon and headed back up the road to Porum. Whitefield was closer, but Porum had an undertaker and a sheriff. Besides, in her current state of mind, Pearl didn’t want to have to endure the incessant yakking and questioning of Bud Hoyt’s ferryman, Cecil Loudcrow. Cecil was the best way for news to travel in those parts.
    “Whur’s Ed?” the Sheriff asked Pearl.
    “I ain’t right sure,” Pearl answered. “I ain’t seen Ed in over a week. Him and Ma got into it about something and she took a horsewhip to him. He cussed her good, and lit out.”
    “Izzat right,” the portly sheriff said, nodding. Then he spit into the brass spittoon next to his desk. He knew about the hostility between Ed and his ma. He also knew about the whippings, as he’d personally witnessed one. Belle had found the boy, then a teenager, inside the Porum Saloon sharing a whiskey bottle with Big Elsie, and chased him out onto the street with a bullwhip. She laid into him over and over, Ed on the ground wailing and begging her to stop. Even though